Sunday, June 16, 2013

Square one

Well I'm basically back to square one. I had a visit with my neurologist a few days ago, and we decided that the Botox wasn't really helping all that much, and there wasn't any reason for me to keep taking prescription painkillers that come in suspicious powder form and cost $200,000 a pound after insurance. So I'm off all of the medications that I was previously on. I'm also going to stop going to the chiropractor, since I've been there for fifty visits now with no notable change in my headaches.

So now I'm back on ibuprofen, and next up I'm going to be trying massage and acupuncture, though massage isn't covered by insurance so I'm almost sort of hoping that it doesn't help. She also prescribed Ambien to help me sleep, though so far it doesn't seem to have any effect on me at all. She did warn me that a decent number of people sleepwalk and even order things online when they're taking it, which sounds kind of hilarious, but I think I'm safe because I have trouble typing my password when I'm awake, let alone unconscious.

She also asked
"Have you ever had cranio-sacral adjustment? I think you should try
that." Then she described that someone was going to feel the energy
around my head and adjust my energy flows using their Gift. Then she
pantomimed a crazy person and replied "So yeah, it's pretty wooo-woooooooo, but then again it's probably better for you than whatever weird poisons I prescribe for you to pop, right?"

In the meantime, it's nice to not be on a long list of different prescription poisons that I'm taking every day. It's not that I'm against being a human guinea pig, but so far it hasn't been fruitful in getting me days free of pain, nor have any of the drugs at all made me totally high and awesome.

Other than those current non-pharmaceutical treatments—massage, acupunture, and cranio-sacral, there isn't really much else for her to suggest next other than variations on drugs I've already taken (I've already taken many variants)—or perhaps marijuana, for which there's definite significant anecdotal evidence in support, though she hasn't mentioned it.